The present invention relates to a weighing system for weighing meats and other perishables for sale in large-scale stores.
Some stores or markets have a plurality of electronic scales placed on showcases and having label printers for weighing goods such as meats, daily dish materials, and other perishables for sale. Each article purchased by a customer is weighed and labeled by a closest electronic scale with a label printer, and the customer is supposed to pay at a check-out counter for all purchased goods.
When totaling the amounts due, the cashier has to enter the prices printed on the labels as inputs into her cash register. Therefore, the amount of work to be done by the cashier is large, and the efficiency is relatively poor when many customers are waiting for check-out. Another problem is that errors are liable to happen when prices are manually input to the cash register Too many such input errors may impair the store's profit.
To avoid the above drawbacks, it has been proposed to connect a plurality of electronic scales to one cash register for transmitting price data computed by each electronic scale to the cash register, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 56(1981)-51623 and 56(1981)-51624.
In the above prior art systems, an electronic scale which is used is designated by the cash register, and the price of a purchased article is entered from the designated electronic scale. When a plurality of customers weigh and label their purchased articles on two or more electronic scales, the customers' amounts due cannot be discriminated, resulting in incorrect calculations.
There has been employed a weiging system in which a plurality of electronic scales are interconnected by a bus, and the prices of articles weighed by store clerks or customers are totaled by each of the electronic scales. When computing the amount due for a customer, the total price of articles purchased is computed by any one of the electronic scales for the same store clerk or customer, and the computed total is printed on a label or receipt.
In this weighing system, the store clerk is required to select and push his clerk number key among a plurality of clerk number keys each time an article is weighed and sold. Therefore, the weighing system has had the following problems:
(1) When the store clerk is quite busy as by giving service to many customers, he or she is likely to push wrong clerk number keys.
(2) If clerk number keys (clerk numbers) are changed, wrong clerk number keys are apt to be pushed.
(3) Where there are many store clerks, many clerk number keys are required, and the key input unit is large in size.
(4) If there are many clerk number keys, it is time-consuming for a clerk to locate his or her clerk number key, and a wrong clerk number key tends to be pushed.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 60(1985)-1664 discloses a system in which the charge-indicating scales at stores are connected to a bank's computer so that the amount due for an article purchased by a person in one of such stores can automatically be withdrawn from his or her acount in the bank.
This system has however been disadvantageous in that communication lines dedicated for data transmission are required to be connected between the charge-indicating scales in the stores and the bank, and the stores and the users must have accounts open in the bank. Therefore, service is available to only a limited number of people.